If Prischah Jeptoo can win a marathon with that godawful running form...

Everyone defending the form of Jeptoo is also making a big, unsubstantiated assumption that 1) her form is "right" for her; and 2) that her form could not be improved, and therefore not lead to any actual performance improvements.

I also find it a bit ludicrous to talk about it being "too late" to change someone's running form. Elite athletes across the sports world make changes to their form to improve their performance: golfers (Tiger Woods), tennis players (Murray), and numerous other Olympic athletes. Why would anyone think that running performance would not be improved with more efficient form?

Now, there may not be agreement about what constitutes efficient running form, but not all experts for other technique-dependent sports like golf agree on what is best either.

To reach your performance potential, leave no stone unturned. Many elite athletes could benefit greatly from a performance psychologist, but it seems as though many are not taking advantage of that either.

I just have to assume that this is not as inefficient as it looks.

I think the important thing is that her foot-strike on the ground is quick and that her feet are landing in front of each other, propelling her in a straight line.

She's not losing stride distance with her side lick as her leg comes forward.

The energy used on the side kick must be negligible.

But it sure looks like itwould be inefficient.

don't forget that nasty arm swing to the right way out there

Maybe her form is right and everyone else's is wrong?

Her arm swing reminds me of Mark Everett.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-b29wnN3UjA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRp8KO8UHOw

formcounts wrote:

what was in her shorts? had a bump in the front

Others mentioned this too. I'm guessing a gu packet or maybe Kleenex.

NativeSon wrote:

She won 625,000 today. She can lend you money and if you refuse to pay her, she'd chase you down the street in that running style and get you.

Just watch out.

NativeSon, wacha zako. LOL.

Speaking of chasing people down, did you see the fright she gave poor Deba when she turned and realised she was being caught? The Ethio girl did like three takes ....

SayWhat? wrote:

...knock-kneed and right leg swinging out for 26.2 miles, then running form obviously does not mean much and speed is really all that matters. It is not a pleasant thing to watch.

In a race, speed from the start to the finish "is really all that matters", yes, but we all know that.

What Jeptoo's idiosyncratic form should be telling you is that being as lean as possible is extremely important for an athlete involved in a strength/weight discipline.

If Deba could have transmitted the same amount of energy over that course yesterday, but carried 1kg of fat less, she would have been running about 6 seconds faster per mile. Jeptoo would have never caught her...or maybe never let her get that far away to begin with.

If Dibaba wants to move up to the marathon and beat Jeptoo, she is going to have to sacrifice a bit of her beauty/baby-face and lose 1 - 1.5 kgs as well. Jeptoo is just too lean. I don't see her doing that. She's had too much success and it's very difficult for a woman who knows she's gorgeous to let that go (even temporarily), not to mention how difficult it is to overcome the body's signals to eat like usual.

It's striking how much Mutai and Jeptoo look alike in the picture on the current homepage where they are wearing jackets and victory laurel's while holding up the sweetest dinner plate ever. Like identical twins: equally lean, same bone structure in the face...even identical teeth! Bizarre, or maybe not.

bizarre how disturbingly unattractive Jeptoo is. Like a skeleton with skin. But hey she's had a big payday and is obviously very successful. Deba on the other hand is hot

kitty bar the door wrote: get her to Alsal - she will be running sub-4.00 for 1500m very soon

she can run big sub-4'00 right now ( or more accurately sunday morning )

she ran an astonishing 65'44 this year with a an absolutely unbelievable 30'03 split

she's got to be good for ~ 29'45/29'50 currently & if she "mo-ed" a 1500 with great pace to the bell, i actually think she coud go

3'55/3'56

El Keniano wrote:

NativeSon wrote:

She won 625,000 today. She can lend you money and if you refuse to pay her, she'd chase you down the street in that running style and get you.

Just watch out.

NativeSon, wacha zako. LOL.

Speaking of chasing people down, did you see the fright she gave poor Deba when she turned and realised she was being caught? The Ethio girl did like three takes ....

Ha ha ha!

Yes, I realised that. Deba turned three times.

I don't think she had seen Jeptoo upto this point. I kept looking for her all the way into the horizon and couldn't see her. I think I saw her when she was about five to seven metres back.

Deba was apparently shocked at her sight. She didn't even give chase and as soon as Jeptoo passed, Deba looked behind to make sure that the second spot was secure. She was so devastated at the finish line and just slumped against the board.

To Be Disclosed wrote:It's striking how much Mutai and Jeptoo look alike in the picture on the current homepage where they are wearing jackets and victory laurel's while holding up the sweetest dinner plate ever. Like identical twins: equally lean, same bone structure in the face...even identical teeth! Bizarre, or maybe not.

i'd have to disagree

mid-race, geoffey looked like Magnum's 3l twin-turbo red Ferrari amongst a bunch of jalopies

the "Man vs Boyz" homepage description was exactly my thought

he oozed crushing power

look at size of his thighs compared to the rest !

he looks a 5k/10k runner mistakenly entered in a M

the man has made the M a "power" race

As canova says your metabolism is more important than your mechanics when it comes to marathon running,unlike say the 100M-800M ,were your mechanics would be more important.

Good video of Jeptoo's form here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSkXnyuYNJQ

Paulson wrote:

Good video of Jeptoo's form here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSkXnyuYNJQ

wow, it's uncanny

And in those other sports there is tons of debate if they changes help. Tiger changed his swing. Is he a better golfer now than he was before? Not really and in a lot of ways he is worse.. And the list of golfers who have decided to change their swing to get better and who were never heard form again is endless.Sure more efficient form is good. But no one really knows what that is or how to get it. They have done studies where they do a ton of stuff that make a runner more efficient. They then measure and it turns nope, none of that stuff changed the efficiency of the runner. Now you can debate that maybe they needed to give it more time (maybe do the training for 2 years instead of 16 weeks) or do x/y/z instead but the reality is that most of what we consider good form is just something that looks nice, not something that is efficient.It is easy to talk about leaving no stone unturned but don't mistake doing productive work for doing busy work either.

El Keniano wrote:

NativeSon wrote:

She won 625,000 today. She can lend you money and if you refuse to pay her, she'd chase you down the street in that running style and get you.

Just watch out.

NativeSon, wacha zako. LOL.

Speaking of chasing people down, did you see the fright she gave poor Deba when she turned and realised she was being caught? The Ethio girl did like three takes ....

The reason Deba looked three times over her shoulder when she saw Jeptoo coming is precisely because of Jeptoo's running form.

The first time she looked, she must have wondered: "whats that coming towards me ?"

The second time she looked she must have thought "OmiGod thats Jeptoo ? How the heck did she catch up so quickly. Did she take a shortcut ?"

The third time she looked : she was like "And how did she catch up so quickly with that crazy azz running form"

In a bizarre way, it's not that inefficient, even though it looks ugly. Inefficiencies in the upper body take more toll than those in the lower body for the purposes of energy uses.

Lower body inefficiencies take a toll on getting the most out of every stride, which can of course affect energy usage. Her problems are primarily lower body inefficiencies. Let's look at what is happening there. The kick out of her leg happens after she has pushed off the ground, so it really doesn't affect the force generated from the toe off.

In fact, the closeness of her knees, compensates for Q-angle issues but takes her too far in the other direction. For those unfamiliar with that, the hips being wider on a woman, causes the leg angle with the ground, on footstrike, to be less perpendicular than that of a man. This of course, causes the applied force to shear in other directions.

The leg kicking out, has the possibility of slowing her gait cycle. She has obviously found a way to compensate for this as most great runners do. The key is really, in keeping the hip over or slightly in front of the footstrike. This limits ground contact, as the foot applies the force immediately without the hip having to swing over the foot in contact with the ground.

An analysis of her hip position and ground contact shows it's pretty decent compared to most top level marathoners. In fact it's better than Paula Radcliffe. I am always quite shocked how bad Radcliffe's hip position is, with her almost seeming to pull on the ground. The price she obviously faced for that was numerous injuries, as the body is made to be pushed by the legs rather than being pulled by the legs, Priscah also strikes the ground more towards the front of her foot than Paula.

Paula is also not that great at minimizing the force going vertically. As runners, we want that force to take us horizontally forward. Some marathoners take this to the extreme as in Alberto Salazar, who almost looked like he was shuffling along. The price to pay for that was a compromised stride length, but he obviously got around that by adjusting his stride frequency to a slightly higher rate.

With Priscah, I get the sense, that it's the knock-knee that forces the leg out, after it comes off the ground. She is definitely not pretty to watch. In analyzing efficiency, it is important to watch the body itself, ignoring the arms and legs. When we do that with runners with quite different forms, like Jeptoo, Radcliffe, Salazar, Decastella and others, we are often more impressed with how little wasted movement there is in sideways and vertical directions. The bodies primarily move forward.

I can't believe people are second-guessing Priscah's running form when she's winning marathons left and right and crushing the likes of Defar and Dibaba.